There are a variety of conventional methods and systems by which customers of a financial institution can initiate and receive reports with respect to multibank/multicurrency transactions.
In one prior art method customers have to communicate directly with the individual banks. In all cases, the customer is required to use separate communication software and establish connection to the banks individually. This process is time consuming and cumbersome. The communication with the separate banks can be achieved in several methods. In one specific prior art method, customers manually call the bank personnel to provide transfer instructions and/or retrieve balance and transaction data on the phone.
In another prior art method, the customer uses either the bank's proprietary software or off-the-shelf communication packages to dial up the bank's mainframe systems via a terminal emulation. Using the bank's proprietary electronic banking software to download balance/transactions data from the banks and input/approve transfer instructions offline and then releasing the transactions in batches to the bank's system.
These prior art systems each suffer from several drawbacks. Extensive training and knowledge with respect to the bank's proprietary systems on the part of the customer is required. The systems are difficult to deploy and maintain and are generally not user friendly. Timeliness of feedback to the customer is a great concern as these methods are typically batch driven through mainframe processes. Furthermore, because of the reliance on software loaded at the client's location, transactions can only be processed from this client location. Each of these problems are multiplied and compounded when the customer has banking relationships with several banking institutions. The customers have to establish separate communications with each of their banks, maintain separate software packages, remember separate user id/password, deal with a variety of security devices, pay for separate software licenses required by their banks, learn to use different transaction input screens, and interface with separate transaction databases.